*** Archers of Loaf SECONDS BEFORE THE ACCIDENT (Alias)

**1/2 Jeff Buckley MYSTERY WHITEBOY (Columbia)

*** Chris Whitley LIVE AT MARTYRS (Messenger)

Seconds Before the Accident amounts to a belated farewell from the Chapel Hill foursome who turned out to be one of the best things that happened to indie rock in the '90s. They may not have evoked the same level of obsessive analysis and fawning devotion many critics reserved for the likes of Pavement, and even after they signed to Elektra, they were spared the fleeting 15 minutes of faux fame that hovered like a curse around dozens of other indie bands groomed by the press for mainstream breakthroughs that just didn't happen. But the Archers were, until their break-up last year, one of the more consistently inspired and inspiring underdog outfits of their era, with a sound that fell between the slanted enchantments of Pavement and the revved-up romanticism of Superchunk, and in Eric Bachmann they had a gruff-voiced singer with a knack for dropping pearls of Being There wisdom like "The underground is overcrowded" ("Greatest of All Time").

Recorded at a Chapel Hill club following the release of what would be the band's final studio album (White Trash Heroes), in November of '98, Seconds Before the Accident is your basic Archers set, warts and all. The hyperactive rhythm section seems to teeter on the verge of collapse, guitars threaten to go out of tune as they dart in and around the backbeat, and Bachmann leads the band forward through sheer force of will as skewed underachiever anthems like "Web in Front," "Strangled by the Stereo Wire," and "Chumming the Ocean" take shape. The Archers had more or less run their course by '98: their best songs, like "Harnessed in Slums" (which isn't included here), were behind them, and Bachmann had begun to focus more on his various side projects (Barry Black, Crooked Fingers). But that didn't prevent the band from turning in a raucous and tuneful performance, and it doesn't prevent Seconds Before the Accident from being a worthwhile keepsake from one of the brightest musical lights of the indie '90s.

Singer/songwriter Jeff Buckley was just getting started when the Mississippi took his life in '96. Which means that fans of the boy with the sensitive, soaring, deceptively powerful voice and the not-yet-fully-developed songwriting skills have had to make do with very little in the way of studio recordings -- basically one album and the demos/half-finished material compiled posthumously on Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk (Columbia). So it was only a matter of time before the hunger for more Buckley would elicit a live album -- particularly since some of the singer's finest recorded moments are found on the promo-only EP Live at Sin-é (Columbia).

In fact, Buckley never did figure out how to capture what he did best in the studio -- there was something a little too bloodless and antiseptic about the performances on Grace. The guitars didn't bite hard enough, and his voice, which was capable of conveying so much more in the way of soulful longing, sadness, and joy than the words he sang ever could, seemed cold and distant. That's not a problem on Mystery Whiteboy, a collection of a dozen tunes performed by Buckley and his band in '95 and '96. His band were something of a work in progress -- often the best way to experience Buckley is the way he appears on Sin-é: solo, with just his cream-colored Telecaster for support. But the players rise to the occasion here on a cover of Big Star's "Kanga Roo," which is rendered as a cross between Sonic Youth's avant dissonance and Led Zeppelin's bluesy bombast. Elsewhere, the sound quality can be sketchy, and even the best of Buckley's originals ("Mojo Pin," "Last Goodbye," and "Grace") have their awkward moments. But it's part of what remains as evidence that Buckley, whose untethered voice here seems to be reaching for something just out of range, was on the road to greatness before he died.

Singer/songwriter/guitarist Chris Whitley is an artist who looks and sounds as if he'd already been there and back -- like someone who's stared death down and no longer has any mortal fears. His is a bluesier muse than Buckley's, one that finds expression in the scraping of steel slide on metal strings, the soulful rattle and open-tuned drone of his dobro guitar, and the bent-string solos that fill the spaces between the lines of his earthy yet mystical lyrics. There are actually two Chris Whitleys, the one who leads an amped-up electric band and coaxes torrents of feedback and distortion from his guitar like some cross between Thurston Moore and the Eric Clapton of Cream, and the one who turns up here, performing solo with acoustic guitar and dobro at Martyrs in Chicago over the course of three August nights in 1999.

It's hard to chose one persona over the other -- he's adept at being both. But it's also hard to imagine that any of the songs here could be played any other way once Whitley's done with them, so definitive are his rough-hewn treatments. "There's a dirty floor underneath here/To receive us when changes fail," he sings against the rusty ring of a few skeletal chords in "Dirt Floor," one of half a dozen tracks that seem to come from deep within the singer's soul and that suggest Whitley has already arrived at the point where Buckley was headed, a place where hard-won transcendence comes as easily as a 1-4-5 blues.

-- Matt Ashare